Agenda item

Resolved: to note the report and to receive further updates on the Safer Lewisham Partnership’s actions to reduce domestic violence and hate crime as they become available.

Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney (Head of Crime Reduction and Supporting People) introduced the report. They key points to note were:

• Tackling domestic violence was a priority locally and nationally.
• Figures showed that there had been an increase in reports of domestic violence in the borough in the past year.
• However, the increase was in contrast to an overall reducing trend. Over 5 years, reports of domestic violence were no greater than regional averages.
• The police were working to increase sanctioned detection rates, ensuring that crimes being reported were followed through to perpetrators being charged.
• There was a focus by Lewisham and its partners as well as the police service on ensuring that victims were supported in order to enable convictions to be made.
• There were no particular domestic violence hot spots in the borough, however, Rushey Green, Lewisham Central and Downham had higher than average rates of reporting. It should be noted that where there is a police station, reported crime rates might be higher because crimes were sometimes recorded where they were reported rather than where they happened.
• Funding for Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVA) was being reviewed by the Mayor’s office for policing and crime (MOPAC).
• The Domestic Violence Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference (DVMARAC) was used for the most serious domestic violence cases, particularly where a persons life was at risk.
• Lewisham’s DV MARAC process had been assessed by an external reviewer and a review report was due within six weeks.
• A specialist domestic violence court had been set up for Lewisham to access. Magistrates at the court had received special training to understand and deal with domestic violence cases.
• The specialist court was in Bexley. There had been recent upheaval because of changes to the court system. However, officers were working to ensure that the referral pathways and victim support were in place.
• From April 2011 it had become a requirement to carry out statutory victim focused domestic violence homicide reviews (which were similar to serious case reviews)
• There had been 4 domestic homicides in Lewisham since this time.
• Reports from domestic homicide reviews would be assessed by the home office.
• There was a need to take a holistic overview of the crimes being perpetrated and the responses to those crimes.
• Officers had put forward recommendations to the Safer Lewisham Partnership (SLP) on measures to tackle domestic violence in the borough.

Hate crime:

• There had been a 27.6% increase in racist and religious hate crime in the borough in the last year.
• Hate crimes are typically underreported – work was being carried out to ensure that victims of hate crime were confident in coming forward to report hate crimes.
• More work needed to be carried out in schools to tackle bullying.
• A system of 3rd party reporting sites was in operation and work was being carried out to ensure reports would increase.
• Work was in progress to set up libraries and other places with universal access to enable people to report hate crimes.
• It was important to ensure that people working in libraries were properly trained to deal with victims.

In response to questions from the Committee, Geeta Subramaniam-Mooney, Kellie Williams, Greg Pople and Adeolu Solarin advised that:

• There were historically high levels of domestic violence in the borough. The whole of South East of London had particularly high levels of domestic violence.
• Figures indicated that there was a 27.47% repeat victimisation rate on 28.7% of crimes.
• There were often difficulties with victims withdrawing from the police process meaning that there were a number of cases where repeat offences did not go forward to prosecution.
• The police, the Council and its partners would continue to focus on prolific offenders.
• It was already known that the key problem times were Sundays between 1-3 and weekdays between 7-9pm and after 1am.
• Work was being carried out to further understand the timing of crimes in order to ensure that police resources were available at critical times. Further work would also be carried out to determine how Safer Neighbourhood Teams might be used to increase response rates.
• There was also an increase in reports around major sporting events. Specifically when England played, and lost, there was an increase in reports of violence in the home.
• The difficulty in some instances was that perpetrators were not present when police arrived and victims were unwilling or unable to work with police to secure a prosecution.
• The police found that 31% of suspects had no permanent address.
• A mixture of responses was required to deal with the range of issues surrounding domestic violence. This included tackling the worst offenders by developing a profile of the top ten perpetrators and victims – and engage in disruptive policing.
• Work was being carried out toestablish a forced marriage protocol with community groups in the borough. There were also processes in place to identify women and girls at risk of female genital mutilation in the borough – and to engage with community groups to raise awareness.
• There were issues around reporting – with both hate crime and domestic violence – further work was required to ensure that the rates of reporting more closely reflected the rates of crime being carried out.
• Work was being undertaken to develop an accurate picture of disability related hate crime in the borough. This was also likely to be an underreported crime.
• The report on the DVMARAC could be circulated to members once it was available.
• Services for victims would be commissioned across London from next year by MOPAC (the details of this process were yet to be advised).
• A hate crime manual was being developed to link people with relevant services in the borough, it would be launched shortly
• There was a link between substance misuse, mental health and domestic violence. The work of the Drug Intervention Team had been broadened to consider alcohol related crime.
• Figures on hate crimes were updated on a daily basis – along with reports of anti-social behaviour and this information was monitored to ensure police were dealing with situations as they arose.
• Libraries could currently be used to report hate crimes. Where staff were not trained to support victims – victims could be given free access to the internet to report the crime online.

Resolved: to note the report and to receive further updates on the Safer Lewisham Partnership’s actions to reduce domestic violence and hate crime as they become available.